Words and photos by Streets Dept Contributor Siena Christopherson.

After years of hanging out in abandoned buildings, creating silly tags and sending photos of those tags to girls–Mr. Shamcow, as he asked me to call him, was finally ready to go public. 

Some of his first draft tags include a cartoon cat and arabic lettering, but ultimately he landed on the infamous “Shamcow!” You have probably seen a cow print at least once in Philadelphia, and that cow print was decorated with the catchy words “Shamcow” or “Shamwow.” Shamwow, as we all know, was a rag/sponge hybrid with a catchy commercial in the ’90s. That name inspired his tag. 

The first public place Mr. Shamcow tagged was a spot on Venice Island in Manayunk, which is still there to this day. Like many of artists who end up creating in our public space, he grew inspiration from some of the famous street artists here in Philly. He remembers seeing Rame’s tag in Kensington and was inspired by the traditional graffiti style and writing. After that he began tagging around Philly from Grays Ferry to Roxborough. He has even tagged some spots in Los Angeles and as far as Turkey. He noticed the fame accumulated in a post in the facebook group “Roxborough Rants and Raves” with a whopping 109 comments about his tag. The comments were filled with arguing boomers and zoomers, some people loving the funny tag and some hating it and begging the City to cover it up. Either way, Shamcow was becoming a local celebrity. 

More fame usually accumulates hate too. Some of the more public beefs with Shamcow include that with Red Hound Heavy Hammer. The beef goes like this: Red Hound put up some art around Cresson Street in Manayunk, this upset Shamcow because Roxborough and Manayunk are notoriously his “territory,” so he told Red Hound to “Stay Out Sham-Yunk.” I asked Shamcow about their beef, and he confirmed the two are friends and that the beef is purely for fun. 

Shamcow has been using his art to help his community. Recently outside of the Acme in Roxborough, it appears that the City left two huge cement blocks on the sidewalk. Shamcow and the community hated these ugly blocks, so he tagged them with his iconic cow print tag.

Normally the City would see the graffiti and remove the blocks, but instead they painted them gray removing the tag and still leaving the inconvenient blocks. Besides this, Shamcow is normally successful in his cleaning efforts, tagging broken or ugly poles or trash that the City will then usually remove. He believes that he is helping clean up the city with his art. He has also been offered money by businesses to paint their building or wall–he donates all the money he is given to the Northlight Community Center. 

Mr. Shamcow either tags Shamcow, if he is on the ground when painting, or Shamwow, if he is rappelling when tagging. Having four years of rock climbing experience helps him in his quest to tag high bridges. He also has one of the highest tags, the heaven spot, on the East Falls twin bridges, approximately 102 ft. above the Schuylkill River. 

The future looks bright for Shamcow. After being featured on CBS Philly and the Inquirer, he has received many requests to paint on private property. Slowly he is covering the city with cow print and his playful tag. He hopes that one day he won’t have to even write Shamcow, and that he could be recognized just by the cow print. Another future project Shamcow is going to venture into is beer making! He is working with a local brewery to make a Shamcow IPA.